TSA Experiences

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Autistic workers may make more reliable TSA baggage handlers, study says

http://globegazette.com/features/autistic-workers-may-make-more-reliable-tsa-baggage-handlers-study/article_964e32ac-a0cf-5d77-9cc2-35d450bc3a04.html

"A study published this year by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Minnesota found that high-functioning autistic men were just as accurate and almost as fast as non-autistic people in finding weapons in X-ray images of baggage.

More important, their performance improved as time went on, particularly in correctly identifying bags that had no weapons."

This is not shocking at all to me.

I love the last sentence of the article, as it is so accurate, and unfortunately unknown by the greater populace:

"... (autistic) individuals have unique abilities that can give them an advantage over others at performing some tasks."

My hope is that overtime autistic individuals will be seen for the incredible skill set many of them have and will be sought out by employers, rather than their skils either not being "seen" or them being discriminated against from the first interview due to their "poor" (per our society), social skills.

My mind goes to higher end, tech government jobs that people who are not neurotypical would do better at than others. I know someone whose father fits this category, has very high up security clearance. She says that many of the people at his workplace seem to be non-neurotypical (in her layman's perspective). This does not surprise me.